


Why Does it Hurt So Much?

by Masterless



Series: What I Wish Would Happen [2]
Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Basile is kind of shitty but also kind of good, Coming Out, Good Friends, M/M, Talk of homophobia, What I wished would happen, they're all kind of shitty but kind of good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 10:25:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17896700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masterless/pseuds/Masterless
Summary: Yann stared after Lucas, holding Arthur back from following, a frown creasing his brows. Lucas had seemed scared and panicky, but not angry until Arthur had opened his mouth and said something stupid. It was usually Basile who said the stupid things, but maybe that was unfair. They all said stupid things. Yann knew he should have pushed harder at Lucas’, made him say what was wrong, what was going on, because he knew Lucas. He would never blow up like this for no reason.





	Why Does it Hurt So Much?

Yann stared after Lucas, holding Arthur back from following, a frown creasing his brows. Lucas had seemed scared and panicky, but not angry until Arthur had opened his mouth and said something stupid. It was usually Basile who said the stupid things, but maybe that was unfair. They all said stupid things. Yann knew he should have pushed harder at Lucas’, made him say what was wrong, what was going on, because he knew Lucas. He would never blow up like this for no reason.

Arthur shrugged Yann off, holding the two broken pieces of his glasses. He was shaking, furious, when he heard voices behind him whispering, “Who was that guy?” Turning, he looked into the party room, and two girls were talking in hushed tones, close enough for him to hear.

“I think his name’s Lucas. Chloé was dating him, I think.”

“Did you hear what she said?”

“That he’s gay? Do you think it’s true?”

“I hope not.” The girl shrugged. “It would be a waste of a perfectly handsome face. Not to mention it’s disgusting.”

Arthur looked down at his hands, the tiny amount of blood on his fingers. It was Lucas’, from his split lip. He was going to have a bruise.

Yann turned to the boys, shaking his head. “I’m going to follow him.”

“Non, Yann, non!” Basile complained. “He doesn’t want to be here, he doesn’t want to be with us! He’s pissed! Why bother?”

“Because he’s our friend!”

“Is he?” Basile backed away when Yann advanced on him, holding his hands up. “Hey! He’s just been avoiding us for weeks, he doesn’t want to hang out with us, it looked like he forced himself to come here tonight!”

“He’s my best friend!” Yann shouted, shaking his head before following in Lucas’ direction.

“Wait!” Arthur said, folding his glasses and shoving them in his pocket. “I’ll come, too.”

“Non,” Yann said, holding out a hand. “I’m going to see if he’s okay, not to start another fight.”

“I won’t start a fight,” Arthur said softly. “I don’t feel good about this, either. He may be a moody bitch sometimes, but he’s not violent.”

Yann stared at him for a moment, but nodded all the same. “Let’s go.”

 

*

 

Basile sighed, listening to Yann and Arthur bicker back and forth in the cold night air. He stopped, wanting to turn back and try to make up with Daphne. She was just starting to like him, and he was super happy about it! Yeah, he might have exaggerated to the boys, but what was he to do? They wouldn’t understand; it wasn’t a cool thing to hold a girl’s hair back while she’s puking. He knew it was the nice thing to do, and he really was a nice person, deep down, but they didn’t expect that of him. They expected sexual stuff. Guy stuff.

He was pulled from his inner monologue when he heard a faint sniffling, followed by a hiccuping sob. He looked down a road that they had decided to ignore, and found their friend sat, curled up on himself, crying. His right hand was bloody, his knuckled split. Basile tapped Yann and Arthur on the shoulders, and when they turned to face him, pointed to Lucas. They stood there for a moment, not really expecting to find him, and definitely not expecting to find him in such a state. 

 

*

 

Lucas’ whole existence hurt. 

He startled when he heard someone sit next to him, and was shocked when he saw it was Arthur. His eyes was squinted, his glasses missing. He had a bruise forming on his cheek from where Lucas punched him, but he could feel one forming on his own face from where the blond had struck back.

“Je suis desole,” Lucas whispered, his voice choked with tears.

Arthur waved a hand, dismissing. “D’accord.”

Footsteps followed, and soon Yann was on his other side, an arm going around him protectively, comfortingly. Basile sat next to him, leaning forward to see Lucas, too. They sat in near silence, the only noise the soft sobs that Lucas couldn’t stop. He never would have cried in front of his friends before, wouldn’t have even thought about it, but now he couldn’t stop himself. There was a pressing weight in his chest, cutting off everything else. He was in such pain that he couldn’t bring himself to care that his friends were finally seeing passed the thick wall he’d built around himself.

Arthur took a deep breath, preparing himself for the worst. “What was his name?”

Basile’s brow furrowed, confused, but Yann nodded along, locking eyes with Arthur over the top of Lucas’ head. 

“E-Elliot,” Lucas whispered, his shoulders sagging. He leaned further into Yann, who held him even tighter. “Elliot.”

“Do you love him?” Arthur asked.

“I don’t know.” Lucas sniffled, wiping his nose on the back of his unbloodied hand. “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “But… if I don’t… why does it hurt so much?”

Arthur leaned over, wrapping his arms around Lucas as well, before taking his injured hand gently in his own. “We should go get this checked out.”

“We?” Lucas asked, looking at him.

“Oui.” Arthur gave him a gentle smile. “We. We’re friends, non?”

Lucas gave a watery smile. “Merci.”

 

*

 

Basile and Yann walked a few steps behind Arthur and Lucas, listening to the city going to sleep around them. They walked in silence for a few moments before Basile broke it.

“Lucas est gay?” he whispered, leaning closer.

“I think so.” Yann shrugged. “It makes sense.”

“But… he’s so good at getting girls?” Basile asked. “How come he never told us?”

“Have you heard the way that people at school talk about gay guys?” Yann stopped in his tracks, causing Basile to stop as well. “Do you remember that guy last year?”

“The one who got picked on?”

“Picked on?” Yann let out a humourless laugh. “They sent him to the hospital, Basile. He was probably scared to lose us, to lose his friends.”

Basile was quiet.

“Is he?” Yann asked, his voice growing cold. 

“Non!” Basile waved his hands, shaking his head. “Non! I don’t care, really, I’m just…” He sighed, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “It’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair?” Yann asked, starting to walk again. Lucas and Arthur were almost an entire block ahead of them now. 

“It’s not fair that he’s gay and he’s so good with the girls!” Basile exclaimed.

Yann laughed, the heavy weight that had descended onto his shoulders when he’s seen Lucas crying lightning some. “You’re jealous?”

“Of course! I was jealous before we knew he’s gay, he’s so handsome! It’s not fair that he gets to look like God sculpted him out of stars and be gay! What’s the use of it?”

Yann frowned, but he was still amused. “I mean… it’s not like no one’s going to like him? Guys will be attracted to him, too.”

“Well, oui, but…” Basile sighed. “With guys, it’s not as deep as with girls. Guys fuck and then they’re happy.”

“Would you be happy to just fuck Daphne and then be done with her?”

“Non!” Basile stuck his hands into his hair, fisting his curls tightly. “God, Yann, I want to just… hold her sometimes. Hug her and have her hug me back. I want to know what he favourite colour is, I want to know what her favourite food is, how to cook it.”

“Then why would it be any different for Lucas?”

“Well, you know what everyone says…”

“Do you think that of Lucas?” Yann frowned at him for real now, getting defensive again. “Do you think Lucas is just going to screw around? Get AIDS and die? Is that really what you think of him after a year of friendship?”

Basile shrugged. “I don’t know? He did screw around a lot with girls.”

“Non, he never did anything more than kiss.” Yann shook his head, slightly disgusted. “He never fucked around. He’s so heartbroken over this guys, and you think that he’s going to say screw that and just… That’s disgusting, Bas.”

“How?” Basile tripped up slightly over a raised stone in the pavement. “Everyone says gay guys sleep around. Everyone says that gay guys-”

“Everyone?” Yann shoved him slightly. “Have you ever heard me say that? Arthur? Anyone we hang around with?”

“Well, non, but… my papa says-”

“Your papa says.” Yann snorted. “So you’d just blindly follow what your papa says instead of using your head to come to your own conclusions about your own friend?”

“Yann.” Basile stopped once again, and Yann knew they weren’t going to catch up with the others any time soon. “He is my friend, but he’s been a shitty friend recently. He missed my birthday party, he’s stood us up quite a few times. He’s been acting like a sexist pig-”

“Don’t you think he has a pretty good reason to pretend to be like you?” Yann regretted it almost as soon as it came out of his head.

“Like me?” Basile repeated, incredulous. “Like me?!”

“You pretended that Daphne gave you a fucking blow job when you were really taking care of her.” Yann waved a hand in the general direction of the school. “You talk about boobs and butts and fucking more than any of us do! You think Lucas felt safe with any of us before tonight? Do you think he thought he could have said, hey guys, that guy over there is cute, without us blowing up at him? Oui, Arthur and I didn’t help anything, but you screamed at him for not being able to go to that first year party and getting your dick wet!” Yann shook his head. “Bas, we’ve all been shitty friends to each other lately, but none of us thought that being ourselves could be a cause for bodily harm. Lucas probably thought we’d stop being his friends, at the very best, and that we might beat him up, at the very worst.”

“I would never beat him up!” Basile yelled, tears springing to his eyes. “I would never want to hurt him!”

“So you think that shitting on him verbally for being gay isn’t hurting him?” Yann stepped closer. “You think that thinking he’s just going to throw his life away now that he’s out isn’t hurting him? That perpetuating a stereotype of gay men isn’t hurting him?”

Basile shook his head, crying now. “Yann…  didn’t…”

“Think.” Yann took a deep breath in. “None of us ever do until it’s too late. But we all have time, now, to fix what we think and how we act.”

Basile nodded, wiping his eyes. Yan sighed and pulled him into a hug, holding him tight. Basile was shaking, his breaths coming out in short puffs. 

“Do you really think he was afraid of us?” Basile whispered.

Yann nodded his head, tired now. “Oui, Bas… I do.”

 

*

 

Further up ahead, Arthur and Lucas were walking in a tense silence. They had been fighting now half an hour ago, and now they were walking back to Lucas’ apartment for first aid supplies. It had been a strange, awful night.

“I’m sorry I said… whatever it was I did to piss you off,” Arthur said. “I didn’t really think about what it would do to you.”

Lucas nodded, staying quiet.

“Could… would you mind telling me why it upset you?” Arthur asked. “So I don’t say it again?”

“My parents are getting a divorce,” Lucas said, his voice barely above a whisper. He was still crying, slightly, a tear escaping every now and again. “My papa just walked out one day, and my mama lost it. She’s in a psychiatric clinic. My papa won’t really talk to me, and my mama thinks that she was sent my God to stop the apocalypse now, so…”

Arthur let out a breath, eyebrows raised. “Oui. That’s… quite a lot to take in. On top of all this with… Elliot? That’s his name?”

“Oui.” Lucas sniffled. “His name is Elliot.”

“And what about him? What did he do?”

Lucas sighed. “He kissed me. He kissed me and it felt like the whole fucking world made sense, like everything was how it was supposed to be. We stayed together all day Saturday, and it was… the best day in my whole life.” He rubbed his eyes with his good hand, sighing again. “I felt like everything was going to be okay, but then… I said something, I don’t even know what, and he stopped talking to me. I told him I came out to Mika, and he said, good for you! But screw you, also, and then he got back together with his girlfriend.”

“He told you to go screw yourself?” Arthur asked, shocked.

“Not in those words, exactly.” Lucas dug his phone from his pocket and pulled up the text conversation, showing it to Arthur. 

“What a bitch.” Arthur handed it back. “You deserve better.”

“I don’t think I deserve anything.” Lucas shook his head. “I just… feel…”

“Played?”

“Oui.”

They were quiet for a moment, but stopped when they heard distant yelling. They turned around, looking back to where Yann and Basile were almost two whole blocks behind them. Yann was yelling at Basile for something, and Basile was yelling back, until Yann cut him off. They couldn’t make out what they were saying.

“You want to know something?” Arthur asked, a tightness in his chest.

“Sure.”

“Before I moved here, I had a boyfriend. His name was Rupert.”

Lucas looked at him, brow furrowed. “But… you like girls?”

“Oui. I like both.”

“You’re bisexual?”

“I prefer pansexual.” Arthur gave him a smile. “Okay?”

Lucas smiled back at him. “Okay.”

 

*

 

Mika really was unprepared for the group of boys coming into his apartment. He was unprepared because he had a guy over who was still butt naked, sweaty, and looked a little like Yann, so he didn’t really want Lucas to see that. They almost ran into Mika’s room, but not before he caught sight of Lucas, tear stained and bloody, but weakly smiling as Arthur walked into their kitchen.

The guy, and to be honest, Mika couldn’t remember his name, quickly pulled his clothes back on.

“Who are they?” he asked.

“Friends of a flatmate.”

“Which one’s your flatmate?”

“The shortest one. With the floppy hair.”

“He’s cute.”

“He’s underage.”

“So?”

Mika frowned. “Okay, leave.”

“What?” The guy stopped in the middle of putting his shirt back on. “What do you mean?”

“I mean leave. If you’re thinking about putting the moves on an underage boy, you can leave.”

He huffed, but did as he was told, eyeing Lucas up before closing the door behind him. Shaking his head, Mike pulled on his bathrobe and walked out into the kitchen, standing in the doorway and looking in. Arthur was gently washing Lucas’ hand, hissing slightly as the blood kept flowing.

“You might need to get stitches,” Arthur said.

“Christ, Lucas,” Mike said, shaking his head again. “Who’d you beat up?”

“A gate, by the looks of things,” Yann replied, side eyeing Mika. “Who was that?”

“That?” Mika waved a disinterested hand. “Just a hookup.”

Basile looked pointedly at Yann, who looked back at him coldly. 

“Do you have hookups a lot?” Yann asked.

“Moi?” Mika put a hand to his chest. “Non. Just when I feel like it and no nice guys have been chatting me up on grinder.”

“So you don’t just… fuck the days away?” Yann asked.

“Non?” Mika huffed out a confused laugh. “That would be irresponsible.”

Yann nodded, looking back to Basile, who sighed and nodded back.

“Why were you asking him all that?” Lucas asked, but his question was forgotten when he hissed in pain, looking back to Arthur, who had pour something onto his hand. “Crist, Arthur! What the fuck was that?”

“Rubbing alcohol.” He went back to covering the cuts with bandages and applying pressure. “To clean the wounds.”

“You could have warned me.”

“It would have made it hurt more.”

Lucas shook his head. “Whatever.”

Arthur quickly wrapped his hand in gauze, securing it with a small strip of medical tape. “If it bleeds through, then I suggest the hospital, but it should be fine for now.”

“How do you know so much about medical stuff?” Basile asked.

“I have a little brother who likes to throw himself off the roof when he’s depressed, and parents who have stopped caring.” He shrugged. “I’ve been to lots of hospitals, so I started to take note of what they were doing. He was never seriously hurt, just a few broken bones.”

“Like… suicidal?” Lucas asked.

“Sometimes.” Arthur packed up the kit. “He’s bipolar.”

“Bipolar?” Yann asked.

“It’s a mental illness. Very high highs and very low lows, on a cycle.”

“Oh.” 

Basile shook his head. “I don’t know if I’d be able to deal with that.”

“It’s hard, but… I love him.” Arthur smiled, bright and slightly bruised. “He’s my brother, so. I do what I can to take care of him.”

Lucas was silent for a moment, and then, “The doctors think ma mere is schizophrenic.”

“Serious?” Yann asked.

“Oui.” Lucas rubbed his face with his hands. “Delusions, hallucinations. All that.”

There was another moment of quiet, in which Yann and Arthur made eye contact, and a conversation seemed to go on between them.

“Do you want to come to mine tonight?” Yann asked. “My parents aren’t in tonight, it would just be us.”

“What about your sister?” Lucas asked.

“She’s at a friends.”

Arthur and Basile nodded, and Lucas did, too, not short after.

 

*

 

They were all strewn across Yann’s living room, Basile and Arthur playing videos games again, with Yann and Lucas watching disinterestedly. Lucas’ eyes, red rimmed from crying and the copious amount of weed that the boys had heaped on him when they’d gotten to Yann’s, wandered over to the unused piano in the corner. He knew Yann’s father used to play, but he couldn’t remember ever hearing it played. He and Yann had been friends since they were kids, but he never heard it played. He sat up, his body feeling so comfortably heavy, and looked back over to the boys.

“You okay?” Yann asked softly.

“Can I check out your piano?” Lucas asked.

“Oui.” Yann gestured to it. “It’s all yours.”

“Can you play?” Basile asked.

Lucas ignored him, slowly folding back the piano’s cover and running his fingers gently across the keys. Then he started to play, his fingers flying across the keys, the notes filling the air as Arthur paused the game as they all turned to watch him play. He started in A minor and move quickly on to alternate between E and A minor. He soon moved to C and G minor, his fingers moving so quickly that Yann couldn’t keep track of the keys he played. He suddenly switched to an agitated theme in D minor, accompanied by repetitive cords on pedal point. He soon returned to A minor, and the song was soon over.

“That was beautiful,” Basile said.

“What was it?” Arthur asked.

“Fur Elise,” Lucas answered, his voice just a whisper.


End file.
